Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, age 99, has new novel coming out

Lawrence Ferlinghetti at his apartment in North Beach on March 1, 2018.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s new novel, “Little Boy,” is due out March 19, 2019.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti leafs through one of his books at his home in San Francisco on March 1, 2018.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti reads from one of his books on a magnifier at his home in San Francisco.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading in his subchaser during World War II.

Photo: Courtesy Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti in San Francisco on May 18, 1967.

Photo: Duke Downey / The Chronicle

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights, which he co-founded in 1953.

Photo: John O’Hara / The Chronicle 2001

What’s a poet in his late 90s to do in his free time?

Write a novel.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who turned 99 in March, has sold “Little Boy,” a book that its publisher, Doubleday, plans to release March 19, 2019, five days before the author’s 100th birthday.

“The book really delivers on the page,” Doubleday Executive Editor Gerald Howard said by phone. “It begins in what I could call the Joycean mode. Ferlinghetti is casting back to his childhood, which was peripatetic and disordered — he was an orphan. He gets down to those memories very vividly.”

After roughly 25 pages, Howard added, “You get the feeling that he’s hitting the accelerator, and all the commas and all the periods fall away, and you just have his voice roaming all over history and literature. It’s cosmic and it’s personal, and no else on Earth could have written it.”

Despite its autobiographical elements, Ferlinghetti is adamant that his book be viewed as a novel.

“It’s a novel, and it’s an imaginary me,” he said by phone. “It’s not an autobiography, it’s not a memoir. I hate that word — memoirs are for Victorian ladies.”

Howard acquired “Little Boy” last month. The book was championed by the New York literary agent Sterling Lord, as the New York Times reported. Also active late in life, Lord, 97, has collaborated with Ferlinghetti for decades; he sold Ferlinghetti’s 1988 novel, “Love in the Days of Rage.” The agent also played a key role in the careers of several writers, selling, among other famous works, Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.”

Ferlinghetti’s best-known book is his world-famous poetry collection “A Coney Island of the Mind” (1958), which sold more than a million copies. His most recent collection is “Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Poems” (New Directions; 2017). The co-owner of City Lights Publishers (with editor Nancy Peters) said he worked on “Little Boy” for years. “An earlier version was understandably incomprehensible,” he said. He reworked it for more than a year, completing the novel about three months ago.

“Little Boy” is about 125 manuscript pages long, Howard said. The finished book will total roughly 160 pages.

As for the publication date coinciding with his 100th birthday, Ferlinghetti said, with a laugh, “I can’t wait — I might not live that long.”

Howard said he considers “Little Boy” to be Ferlinghetti’s “grand statement on what it all means.”